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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26034145">Daylilies of Dried Blood</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchspellbook/pseuds/witchspellbook'>witchspellbook</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Piece</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji, Flashbacks, Hanahaki Disease, Let Nami Say Fuck, M/M, Pining Roronoa Zoro, Roronoa Zoro and Nami are bros, Roronoa Zoro and Vinsmoke Sanji Bickering, Roronoa Zoro is Bad At Feelings, Roronoa Zoro is scared of Nami, Roronoa Zoro-centric, Sanji has not hear of bisexuality YET, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Worried Vinsmoke Sanji, chopper needs a rest, everybody is worried, everybody swears, i forgot to put that last tag, luffy knows, title is kinda emo but this is a hanahaki fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:54:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,838</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26034145</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchspellbook/pseuds/witchspellbook</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoro feels breathless. It’s not his the usual breathlessness though, not the one swelling his chest with pride after seen the cook kick ass without breaking a sweat, not the breathlessness that comes when the cook laughs, looking for him across the table because the food is good and the booze is plenty and the adventure had ended fine, no, this time it’s a breathless like there is something smothering him from the inside. </p><p>or, Zoro loves Sanji, he loves him enough to not make him loose someone dear again.</p><p>or, Zoro is being stupid and dying again and the crew try to comfort the pining dumbass.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>119</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>403</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>One Piece bests</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Roots</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A hanahaki disease fic for your edgy need and because i felt like making Zoro suffer</p><p>Please enjoy~~</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>                                                      </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Why the hell is a plant in the food, cook?!” Zoro manages to choke out loud enough to be listen across the table, something vegetable sticking to his throat almost choking him to death – and it may be his fault for laughing at Luffy being kicked out the galley for trying to swallow a whole pan of stew the cook is preparing for dinner but the food tastes weird and he has to blame someone and the cook is just there and already angry.</p><p>“It’s a fucking vegetable, shitty marimo! You eat them every day.” The cooks then turs towards him and threatens him with a wooden spoon “If you are not eating your vegetables, fucker, I will shove them down your throat with my foot”</p><p>“Not this type” Zoro barks back because after spiting the offensive thing on his throat he can see a chomped down yellow petal of some sort, and he is brandishing it towards the cook like a threat.</p><p>“…the hell? That’s a petal. I don’t put flowers on the food, we don’t have the money for that kind of décor.” Zoro looks up at him like he has just grown a second head, half because what he is saying is ridiculous and half because it annoys the love-cook. Sanji frowns and blushes and looks away towards the windows with view to prow “it must have come from the outside… “Zoro looks towards the window too, the ship’s garden doesn’t have yellow flowers, the ship’s garden doesn’t have any flowers at all currently and they are far enough of the shore that it’s not probable that something has flown all the way into his dish.</p><p>The conversation is cut short by Jimbe coming inside the galley, accidentally letting Luffy in who tries to steal the pot this time and Sanji just doesn’t have the mind to focus on his petal anymore and that’s fair.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>The petals keep showing up, though, one, two, three at the time, almost always falling from his mouth, a couple of times out of his nose. He has concealed from Chopper who tries to check him for allergies because he’s been coughing too much lately, and it all started on that day in the galley, Zoro realises after several meditation sessions. By the time he realises the petals are not going anyway he can already tell when they are coming by the sensation in his throat, like a breadcrumb stuck in the back of his throat.</p><p>It’s weird. It’s annoying. He sneezes and finds two petals shooting out of his mouth, like the most worthless devil fruit power, which he is not, because he still can swim and float, he checked, he would cough and find three. It is worrisome and he has the dooming sensation that is going to gradually get worse, he should let Chopper check him, but he figured out early on that the falling of the petals have direct relation with the cook.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He is pucking overboard the Merry, five in the morning unable to sleep. The sea, the fucking sea. He is giving up his insides, the best fucking food he’s ever tasted, the tea to wash it down and the booze to celebrate the return of the sea-witch and his bile. Only once he has felt so weak in his life and it had been only days ago. Only once he had felt so helpless and it had been almost a decade back.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His chest hurts and he can feel every stich screaming trying to open again with every heave, the Merry swings slowly again in the calm sea and Zoro knows he has just left fingertip-like marks in the wooden rail.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He is too busy thinking of ways to set fire to the entire sea, of how much he still has to train to cut it in half, regretting every decision and action that led him to this moment, the sway of the calm sea worse than the trashing of a stormy one, that he doesn’t realizes when someone steps by his side until he feels the tap on his shoulder.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He jumps out of his skin and tries to spit his too bug tongue out of the rags of his mouth, coughs and turn around. There’s the pervert-cook looking at him something weird. Shit.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Just breathe it out, man” he tells him, and then “I’ve seen you meditate; you can pull it off”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Zoro glares daggers at him but breathes in anyway, closing his eyes and counting backwards from 10, then out 10 again. He breathes until he feels like his tongue fits in his mouth again, focusing in the salt smell of the ocean, on the smoke of the pervert-cook cigarette, on the aroma that the sea-witch’s tree emits.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He lets himself slide down the rail, his legs weak and his head still swinging, is this how getting drunk feels? Why do other people even drink? The pervert-cook sits beside him leaving a space between them. He leaves a bottle there, for Zoro.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Zoro lifts an eyebrow, still focused on breathing and somehow the pervert-cook doesn’t need more to understand.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“it’s just water, come on, you’ll dehydrate at this pace” Zoro grabs the bottle with all the intent of emptying it out on his mouth. “Oii no, easy,” the pervert-cook takes the bottle from him before he pours it on his mouth “small sips, or you’ll barf it all up again.” He hands him the bottle again and Zoro tips it on his mouth, small sips, it washes down the acrid taste of his insides, he takes a bigger gulp and rinses his mouth with it, spitting the taste of acid from his mouth into the ocean over the rail. When he sits back down the pervert-cook is looking at him with a scowl but Zoro knows that he is okay with him cleaning his mouth, it doesn’t mean he has to like it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They sit together in silence and in the time it takes Zoro to slowly drink half the water the blonde has finished his cigarette. Zoro hasn’t seen many blonde people and the bright yellow of his hair should be as annoying as the witch’s orange but under the moonlight it looks as white as the silk in Wadö. Zoro is still not sure if he likes this guy or not, but he has been twice wrong with the sea-witch so far so he thinks wise to let time be judge of it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You haven’t spent long at sea, I can tell,” he states putting away the but if his cigarette, then he chuckles “I bet you look as green as your hair right now”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Fuck off”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Get used to it, it makes the legs strong” he says kicking a long leg in front of himself, Zoro looks at it unimpressed, black clad from the waist to the tip of the shiny shoe, he’s seen what the blond legs can do, he thinks he can do better, if only he trained a little, but there is a natural gracefulness to the way in which they move, in and outside battle, and Zoro thinks of his own legs, that shake and wobble in the deck of the Merry and fells heavy and clumsy.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What are you doing here pervert-cook?” Zoro growls, his stomach still tender but not throwing a tantrum over the water.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Came out to make breakfast, then I saw a troll throwing up his guts over the rail and felt pity,” he answers with a shit eating grin “now the troll is not throwing up anymore so I’m out to the galley,” the pervert-cook adds before he stands up with a grace that makes Zoro feel like his feet are made of lead and saunters light like seafoam to the galley, like his feet don’t touch the wood of the deck. Bastard.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>It’s a couple of months into the thing and Zoro feel breathless. It has become hard to train and harder to hide from Chopper and the moment he coughs his fist flower he realizes he has to act.</p><p>He crosses paths with the cook on the bathroom, Zoro storming in, covered in machine oil Usopp had dropped all over him and finds himself face to face with a very naked Sanji coming out of the bath. It hits him like a cannonball the blinding want Sanji makes him feel. There is a moment when they are both still, frozen by surprise. And Zoro feels breathless. It’s not his the usual breathless though, not the one swelling his chest with pride after seen the cook kick ass without breaking a sweat, not the breathlessness that comes when the cook laughs, looking for him across the table because the food is good and the booze is plenty and the adventure had ended fine, no, this time it’s a breathless like there is something smothering him from the inside. He could have scratched his neck raw if Sanji had not come by and, wrapping a towel around his waist, had called him out.</p><p>“You are filthy”</p><p>Zoro clears his throat, there is something there, clawing his way up, nesting in his mouth.</p><p>“No shit, genius,” he can see the droplets run down through the cook’s torso, mapping out the outline of his muscles in skin pale like milk and seafoam. He is surprised that a starving child could have grown to be such a strong man but he can’t be anything but glad about it, proud even, and he wants – hell he wants – but he manages to say through chocked words “now get out, I gotta shower”</p><p>“Alright, man, no fucking privacy in this damn ship…” Sanji says bending to grab his shoes from the floor, and really, he has lived his entire life on boats and vessels, he knows how it is always cramped and never lonely. Zoro coughs, attempting to clear his throat and he is not blushing and he fuck he wishes he were, because he is chocking, his pants may be a little tight but it’s not important because there is something living in his throat and it wants to come out. The cook finally leaves the room and Zoro hurries himself over to the sink, coughing his lungs out. There is blood. There is blood and petals and this time a couple flowers crawl out of his mouth. With cold sweat is covering his back and with his legs about to give in and when he looks at the mirror his skin is ashy. He cleans the sink with shaky hands that he schools immediately, shaky hands on a swordsman is a disgrace. He keeps a flower, one that looks the most alive, they are not wilted, not even bruised, but he cleans the blood of the perfectly yellow little thing and places it where he will remember to take it back. They are reaching port the next day and he would like to investigate what the fuck is wrong with him before taking it to Chopper.</p><p>When his legs feel strong enough to move him around, he goes and bathes instead, he has been feeling heavy and now knows to blame the petals and flowers, but he would like to sleep warm and not worry he is going to slip in the shower thanks to another coughing fit.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>There are a couple of things he has learned from his nakama; after having cleared the incident of Cocoyashi and Arlon Park Zoro thinks Nami is not that bad, not that he is going to tell her but she can handle her booze and it’s actually fun drinking with her, she can drink most of the crew under the table – Usopp and the cook are both lightweights and cant do more than one bottle of spirits each, Luffy drinks and drinks and drinks and then falls asleep without a warning – she also hits hard when she is angry, not when she is scared, only when she is angry.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Usopp lies the most when he is nervous and is still scared of him, but as soon as he need protection, he runs to Zoro for help, its annoying but it also makes Zoro feel dependable, grown and in no time Zoro finds himself thinking of him as a younger brother, he is not sure where the instinct comes from but there it is and it’s not bothered if Zoro acts like an arse form time to time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Luffy… Zoro has never met someone as stupid. He is great fun, though, and a great judge of character, he understands things, motivations. He understands people with scary accuracy, and it impresses Zoro that his solutions to problems are drastically different from his, even when using the same system to fix them; fight ’em. Yet, Zoro is having fun with him and has already made another unbreakable promise so he is sticking until the boy becomes the Pirate King.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Vivi, for one thing, Zoro knows she is going to leave them at some point, so he tries not to get too attached to her but its hard when the girl fights so much and with such fierceness over the kingdom she cares about, it doesn’t help that he is the only one that gets the cool nickname; Mister Bushido, he likes it, and that she seems to favour his company over the cook’s, but just only to see his reactions, she is funny. Zoro thinks he will miss her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The cook on the other hand, a pretty boy too smart for his own good and Zoro has the suspicion that he could survive anything you throw at him, drop him in a hostile environment and as long as he has a way to find food he will thrive, but he needs attention. So, when it comes to women, he becomes a lost case. It bothers Zoro, though, the fact that he finds himself drawn to him, Sanji is so easily provoked and fighting with him is a good workout, for his body and for his wit, something he didn’t know he had before meeting the pervert-cook. It’s irritating, because he can’t stop looking at him, the way he fights like he is made of water, like he is not afraid of getting hurt. Zoro tries to convince himself it’s because he has never seen someone fight the way the cook does, that he is studying him, to defeat him and to match their fighting stiles in case they need to protect their weaker nakama, and there is a bit of truth in that, but Zoro realises he is lying to himself but he is not sure why.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Just because of that and just to annoy the cook and purposefully misunderstand his sense of humour he decides to adopt the new crewmember, the tiny doctor with the blue nose. The cook says he is emergency food and for that Zoro makes sure to treat the shapeshifting reindeer like one of the little siblings he keeps adding to his list.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>Daylily. That’s the name of the flower. He’s been wondering, looking for a bookstore or a local medicine-man, not a doctor, if he wanted an actual doctor the crew has the best one, no, he needs someone that that knows tradition, maybe even a curse breaker, because that what he suspect it’s in his chest and if he is correct then there is no need to worry Chopper. He finds a bush of them in a garden in front of the sea. There are a bunch of other flowers there as well, but most of them on vases and buckets, sorted by type and colour. It’s a house with a flower shop stall and next to the picket fence a bush of the yellow flowers sprouting among thin, long, green leaves, the bush is not taller than his knees and it looks shaggy, but Zoro notices that there is a line of the same plants next to the fence but the flower shooting from them in firm but thing stems have a range of colours that Zoro doesn’t care about because his is pure yellow, from the bottom of the calyx to the top of point of the petals. His own little pest is tucked tightly in his haramaki and when he pulls it out to asks the owner what kind of weed it is the old woman had laugher and told him. They had another name too; a weird one he’ll never remember. She had also told him that the plant is a tough one, it can grow in neglected areas, but like the soil close to the sea, at least the yellow kinds do. They are harvested as food too, for soups and pork stews, and she had plucked two young ones and had handed one to him and eaten the other.</p><p>“oh, this one’s spicy” she had said as Zoro bit into the one he had, it was spicy, but also had a fruity something. The flowers, the daylilies, they were oddly fitting.</p><p>Soon after leaving the shop he had found Robin and decides to tag along with her, because if someone in the crew is going to find a bookstore it’s going to be her. He carries her bags for her, though, even if she has plenty of hands to carry them herself. It’s not long when she finds the one bookshop of the town and while she buries herself in old books Zoro gravitates towards the curses section, Robin seems to be having fun so Zoro judges he has time to investigate.</p><p>He finds what he is looking for in a weird intersection of books of medicine, botany and of the Grand Line. It’s a book about the particular Grand Line botany its different plant and consequences of their consumption. He skims the pages, it’s heavy on text but also an illustrated book with images of the different plants and effects on the human body. The book had a big chapter on devil fruits, listing the most famous ones and renown users, but a couple of chapters later, Zoro caught sight of an illustration of human lungs full of flowers, the next page the illustration depicts those same flowers coming out of the nose and mouth. Deciding he has found what he needs Zoro takes his finding to the book about swords section, if he is buying books he may as well find something interesting there.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>It’s not a curse. It’s a disease. More specifically Hanahaki disease, the book says. Product of unrequired love, fatal if not treated it leaves the host with one year life expectancy. The shortest death recorded to date, however, is of one moth. If treated too late the host can lose the ability to feel any kind of love whatsoever. The book lists the stages of the disease, but its an old book so is not entirely reliable. Coughing flowers and blood is the first of the latest stages, still treatable, still not deadly. Throwing up flowers more than once a week is the next stage, and after that flowers would fall from the sick person’s mouth every time they spoke, as the countdown of the last five days before the disease takes over and the plant blooms from the hosts body. On a side note, the book discloses that the flowers have a direct resemblance with the loved one.</p><p>He has time Zoro tells himself, he is still just on the first stage, so he lets it be. He will tell Chopper, before shit gets too complicated, or if it hinders his ability to train, but only when they have a quiet time, when he knows the rest of the crew won’t know.</p><p>But Sanji is happy, and that’s a problem. He is the happiest he has been since Zoro knows him. Since coming back from Whole Cake Island his smiles is brighter than the sun, he sings while cooking and jokes around and teases him good naturedly, because they are friends, Sanji tells him drunk on wine and victory during and afterparty, and I know we fight like we hate each other’s fucking guts but you are my best friend, man, you are like the brother I should have had, and then Nami crosses in front of them, barely dressed in an obscene bikini on her way for a drunken night swim and it helps him to hide the flowers he is coughing inside his wooden mug, but it’s still half full and the yellow pests overflow it and he still feels like something wants to crawl out of him. Zoro stands and in a dark corner he just lets them out. Full flowers and blood spots and he can’t breathe, he is tearing up, gagging and gasping from air. And he forces himself to breathe, to empty his head and count backwards from ten.</p><p>He cannot deny it any longer, not when exercising is hard now, when he is out of breath and wheezing in a third of the time it usually takes him just to work up a sweat, and he coughs more, sometimes petals, sometimes not. So, he meditates, but his thoughts still circle back to the cook, to his last battle and how can he improve his perfect technique, because he can’t think of him as anything more. Because it never will be anything more.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“The ball looks good on you!” it slips from his mouth and the cook looks up like the backwards compliment actually makes him happy, and damn it because he does look cute, the kind of cute that resembles a toddler dressed in costume. “You look like a prince, even,” he can’t help to say. What is he doing? He can’t be unintentionally flirting with the cook, fist because he has never been good at flirting and second because it just means trouble “like the prince of Dumbass Kingdom” he adds quickly to burry whatever true there may be in what he just said and the cook does something odd, he makes a face like he agrees with Zoro, it lasts a second before he is yelling at him and Zoro is already used to tune him off.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Later, when they are safe and the cook has made something hot for them to recover from their brief encounter with Aojiki Zoro finally has time to reflect, he can’t like the cook, can he? He is foul mouthed and loud, irascible, purposefully annoying and antagonistic with every man he sees as possible threat and even some that aren’t, lets himself be walked over by any woman pretty enough, smokes like a goddamned chimney, demands behaviours from the crew that he breaks as often as the rest and has weird eyebrows.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But damn if they don’t fight good side by side, and damn if isn’t it fun.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Still, Zoro admits to himself while the cook buzzes around the galley with trays of hot drinks and warm morsels, that Sanji is the most beautiful man he has ever seen, and it pisses him off.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s not juts that his hair looks like it’s made of silk and sunshine - Zoro let a weight fall on him on purpose the first time he caught himself thinking this - or that his legs look like they go up to his neck, or that he can wrap them behind his neck (which is attractive on him but not on Luffy). It’s that when he smiles the whole world seems to hold his breath, every sound dimming waiting for him to laugh, it’s that his hands are long and dexterous and look soft and when he is cooking they move fluid and confident, it’s that when he cooks he seems to be lost to the world, humming something that sounds like a lullaby and when someone asks him what he is singing he doesn’t seem to realize he has been humming. It’s the effortless way he seems to fight, fluid movements and strong kicks and that he can go from jumping the height of his head for a split kick to a handstand with a heel kick to end with a spinning round kick without losing momentum, without losing elegance, something Zoro has never considered himself to have.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ok. He is fucked.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s stupid, its so stupid, in the coming weeks Zoro has to vanish the though of hiding the cook’s shirts so he has to walk around shirtless, caught himself buying packages of cigarettes just in case the cook runs out in a long sail and not even a week later hiding the cook bought cigarette packages because Chopper insist of him to stop smoking.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He is so, so fucked.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Stem.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i forgot to say in the first update that this fic is finished and that ill be updating it every fryday. <br/>i started writing this in 2018 and never though id finish it cuz i was just uuuhh fucking around and procrastinating writing other things when i fist wrote the first parts. and also procrastinating writing another zosan when i realized this one was almost finished and that this was bringing more joy that fighting the other one. </p><p>also! thanks to all the people that left comments and if i havent replied to yours its cuz i dont know what to say not that i dont want to reply it cuz it made me very happy!</p><p>if you what to see what kind of flower zoro is coughing you can find a picture in here: <br/>https://www.highcountrygardens.com/media/catalog/product/h/e/hemerocallis-stella-d-oro-yellow-cropped.jpg?quality=80&amp;bg-color=255,255,255&amp;fit=bounds&amp;height=&amp;width=</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>The day Zoro passes out in the middle of a fight is the day the crew finds out. They are being attacked by another pirate crew, a low ranked but with nothing to lose captain convinced that if he managed to get the head of one of the Straw Hat, he would become famous. Bad luck had struck both ships when a storm had kicked off in the middle of the battle, making it unable to see past their own hands and leaving the deck floor slippery, its gust of winds creating waves that could turn any of the vessels and the enemy crew, not in alliance with a Nami, had tried to run completely terrified back to their own ship.</p><p>Zoro had just seen the cook’s display of strength and grace with a series of kick that made him look like he walked on air – which he does, Zoro reminds himself, just not at that moment – when he feels the tell-tale burning of the petals clawing up through his chest. He starts coughing, except he doesn’t, he forces the spasm to stop and swallows the flowers down, but the burning doesn’t stop, he has been nearly chocked to death before, he has swallowed and vomited seawater before, but this time the asphyxiation is different, it has the burning of the salt water down his nose and the pain of a sole on his trachea but the soft petals are what is keeping the air outside. And he coughs, or tries, dropping Wadö from his mouth bloodied yellow falling off his mouth and he still can’t breathe when a wave crash against the Sunny almost washing away Wadö. He tries to catch her, to hold her before the sea takes her but his sight is blurry and his arms heavy and his legs don’t respond. Zoro fights to stay conscious long enough to feel his knee hit the floor and before his head bounces on the deck he thinks he sees the cook running towards him. Then everything goes black.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>When he wakes up Wadö is in her sheath resting next to Sandai and Enma, he is in the infirmary and his mouth has the metallic taste of blood but his head has been bandaged and he is in dry clothes. That’s the moment he knows he is in trouble. He gets up and walks into the galley, his swords at his hip where they belong. There are five seconds of silence that fall among the crew the moment he steps on the kitchen-dining area, just the amount of time needed for him to close the door and sit on the nearest bench. Then hell breaks loose.</p><p>“What the fuck happened Zoro?” He hears Nami yell and then Brook “For a moment I thought you were a dead-man standing, yohohoho” laughing at his own joke.</p><p>“I patched you up as best as I can but if it’s something internal you have to tell me!”</p><p>“Did you slip on the wet floor or what?!” Usopp asks him grabbing him by the arm and trying to shake him.</p><p>“It must be something” Luffy adds shoving Usopp off the way to try and see if he is hurt, only to undo his head bandage “Zoro would never get hurt in a fight so boring!”</p><p>“You have been coughing a lot lately” Jimbe offers from somewhere across the table, and Zoro swears to himself.</p><p>“Are you ok, bro? Have you been eating good?”</p><p>“Of course, he is, motherfucker! I’m the one feeding him! Now what the fuck happened marimo, you scared the shit outta Chopper”</p><p>“Nothing. I-”</p><p>“I’ve fucking had it with your nothing, Zoro!” There is rage in Sanji’s words, the kind that is only born of fear and impotence and Zoro is reminded of the last time he had answered the cook the same thing “I saw you fucking loose the grip on you fucking sword! The white one, Wadö, you never leave that thing out of your sight and then you were fucking dropping to the floor. I carried you back in and you were blue, out of fucking breath and no one in that shitty weak-ass crew had any ability to attack on distance to get to choke you”</p><p>“You don’t have any sing of strangulation either, but you did have of suffocation symptoms when I checked you” Chopper informs him, his face calculating, connecting dots. He knows Zoro is not on his best and Zoro fears he may have discovered his situation all on his own.</p><p>“What the shit, man? Can’t you just fucking tell us?” the cook demands from him, voice soft and earnest, Zoro can feel his eyes fixed on him, pleading and he can’t stand it, he holds his breath and waits for the worse to pass but his chest spasm like saying here I am face me, confront me, let me out and he can’t hold it in.</p><p>He coughs into his hand but his nakama have sharp eyes when it matters and petals are falling from his mouth. Fast like she knows what is happening Robin places a bucket in front of him. He’s had coughing fits before, not many but this is one of the worsts so far, he feels his throat bleeding, already raw from the seizure on deck and his lungs trying to un-stuck to themselves like velcro, and his eye waters as he vomits perfect yellow flowers stained with his blood in the bucket. He can’t stop them, he can’t breathe through them, doubled down over the bucket letting flowers fall from his mouth, emptying not his stomach but his lungs and what feels like his entire ribcage.</p><p>After what feels like an eternity, he finally regains control of his own body, he takes a heavy breath and another, and tries to recover some composure with his sight fixed on the overflowing container, not paying attention to the floor, covered with his dreaded little plant. Zoro squares up, wiping the blood and spit from the corner of his mouth and the sweat from his brow, looking defiant as if anyone dares to say something. Chopper does.</p><p>“Grab him”</p><p>Three pairs of arms pop out of thin air to hold him in place the same moment the little doctor stands, changing form to heavy point and making his way to him, shouting at him and Zoro has no way to run.</p><p>“You utter fucking idiot” How could you not tell us? How could you not fucking tell <em>me</em>?! At this stage!” and Zoro feels bad now because Chopper is crying now, big wet tears of rage and fear rolling down his fuzzy face.</p><p>“What is it? What’s happening to Zoro?” Nami asks too scared to raise her voice.</p><p>“It’s the Hanahaki Disease,” Robin answers breaking her silence. She looks as scared as Chopper just slightly more put together “it’s not common but I’ve seen some cases on my Baroque Works days, Crocodile was trying to harvest its potential to control the population. The death of a carrier it’s something… beautiful. Completely horrifying too. People scratch their necks raw and turn blue before the flowers shoot up from their airways. Who is it, Zoro?”</p><p>“Is it contagious? Why is he puking flowers?” Usopp almost shouts by his ear and Robin lets him move enough to stay away from the scream.</p><p>“It’s not,” Chopper tells him “it’s a disease that makes the bearer cough petals and flowers until it suffocates them, it messes up the respiratory system, fills it up with blossoms and roots, pant matter.” He continues while examining Zoro the best he can, pushing his head up to look through his nostrils with help from a little torch, Chopper then opens his mouth, lights it and shoves his hand inside to pull at something that Zoro feels tickling at the back of his throat, his mouth now tastes like daylily, blood and fur. “It’s caused by bottling up emotions that are connected to heartbreak and not reciprocated love. Zoro is in love with someone that doesn’t love him back.” The human shaped reindeer sentences and Zoro flinches, he doesn’t need a reminder of the fact that the blood sitting across the table, looking at him with fear and pity, does not love him.</p><p>“The theory suggest that the seed is planted by unrequired love and it develops when there is a lack of closure, meaning, no confession from the carrier. It grows inside the host lungs as time goes by, if it’s not treated on time or at all the flowers will sprout out of the host airways smothering them to death.” Robin adds to enlight the crew “However, it has a cure. If the loved one returns the host’s feelings the flower will wither and die, or, it can be extracted through an operation. It has a downside: if Zoro goes through with the operation, he will forget everything about the person he now loves, every memory, every detail, every reason why he loves them will be gone.”</p><p>Silence falls among the crew, as if everyone is thinking about their loved ones, about if they would be willing to gamble their memory for their lives. When Luffy speaks it’s with the authority of a captain, with the aplomb of the next King of the Pirates.</p><p>“Who is it, Zoro? Who do we need to find?”</p><p>“It’s- It’s someone I met some islands ago.” he lies, the crew mustn’t know, it would throw away the balance among them, it would raise guilts and suspicions, <em>he</em> mustn’t know. But Zoro can tell Luffy knows he is lying “We’ve run on each other several times, on several islands…”</p><p>“How long has it been, bro? How long have you been coughing them, Zoro?” Franky and Brook ask at the same time.</p><p>“At least a couple of months, seeing as the flower is coming out entire, and not just like petals” Robin mutters, and Zoro lets her, he doesn’t want to talk about this. He can’t tell, he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t want to.</p><p>“Zoro you are dying” Nami then whispers and shit, he thought he had more time, it’s not like he wasn’t going to tell Chopper, he knows what he had to, he was only postponing it, otherwise… otherwise he doesn’t know how things will turn out.</p><p>“Is there no way for you to tell her? A den-den mushi? Mail? Do you talk to each other while at sea?” Jimbe wonders out loud and Zoro shakes his head. He can talk to them every day, just not about this.</p><p>“We only hang out when we meet. I’m not their type anyway. Never will be” he shoots a fast glance at the cook and then sensing something at Luffy and he can tell that Luffy saw him, goddamned the kid, goddamned their captain.</p><p>“We can go back to the last port you saw her, follow their tracks.” Nami offers but it’s no good “We can go back, right? Jimbe? Luffy?”</p><p>“No” Luffy sentences lowering his hat over his eyes.</p><p>“No? He is dying and you won’t let us go back? What kind of nakama are you, what kind of captain?!” Nami berates, and Zoro is grateful for her fighting for him, but it’s no use.</p><p>“It’s what he wants”</p><p>With that Luffy leaves the galley and leaves them to their own, Chopper takes his hand quietly and leads him into the infirmary, Robin follows them.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>There is a high-pitched scream coming from the galley and Zoro rushes in, it can’t be Nami because he just saw her with Robin and Chopper up in the crow’s nest, neither can be Usopp who is fishing close to the figurehead of the Going Merry. Zoro slams the door open, Wadö already unsheathed, there could be a polyzoon, some devil user trying to sink the ship or a girl the cook sneaked in and now is realizing her mistake. Where is the cook, anyways? And why hasn’t anyone else showed up for a scream like that?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The cook… the cook is the one shouting his lungs out trying to crawl on top of the fridge, pale as paper and horrifically scared. It makes Zoro’s hair stand on edge, what kind of thing could make the cook scream like that?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What is it? What do I kill?!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The cook mumbles hysterically from his place folded over the fridge pointing desperately to the floor, near the dining table, is he by any chance crying??</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“KillitohGodpleasekillitkillitkillitahhh!!” Zoro looks down to where the love-cook is pointing. There is something flopping next to the leg of the table.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A moth. It’s big, kind of grey and ugly but besides the moth there is nothing different from usual in the galley. Zoro sheathes Wadö and points at it with his finger and one raised eyebrow. This? Really? The cook shrieks and shoves himself further up into the space over the fridge. What the fuck? Zoro picks up the moth from one wing and walks with it out of the galley and throws it overboard, the bug has a broken wing and Zoro can see it flop uselessly before falling into the ocean. When he enters the galley again to check on the love-cook he is still over the fridge, teary eyed and frantic.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What did you do with it?!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I threw it on the ocean”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It has WINGS it can FLY”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“They were broken, it’s gonna drown. Are you really so afraid of a little bug?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’ve never had them shoved inside your clothes! Oh God I can still feel it” he shudders and Zoro thinks the cook really should get himself down from the fridge.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Would you get down from there?” he huffs trying to hide a laugh, it’s not often Zoro has seen him scared but not in danger, it’s weird and funny and Zoro still can’t understand why even in hysterics the love-cook still looks attractive, pale as a sheet, teary eyed and sweaty and he still looks kind of cute. Zoro banishes the though quickly, he is already risking the kick of his lifetime without thinking those things.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What if there is another? The motherfuckers love to fly right to my face” Sanji says looking crazy and Zoro takes the executive decision of laughing at him later, because the cook really looks scared.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Oii! Get down” Zoro ignores him, opting instead for yanking him form on top of the electro domestic “Do you need a tea? Something stronger?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I need you to tell me there are no more bugs in my fucking kitchen. I keep this place spotless, there should not be any kind of…” Zoro left him to ramble at the table, tuning him off easily thanks to experience while he takes a handful of tea leave and drops them in a pot with hot water, after all a raging cook is a safe cook.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I will kill it, ok? If there are any bugs in your kitchen, I’ll kill them” Zoro promises, putting a steaming teacup in front of the love-cook. He is not sure why he is promising this, but it seems to calm the cook so Zoro decides not to reflect on it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m holding you fucking accountable- you put rum on this?!”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>He is currently running away from Robin and Chopper and an afternoon full of unstoppable exams and tests and questions and syringes, they have been at it the entire morning and a big part of last night and Zoro thinks he deserves a break. That’s it if he manages to hide himself from the all-seeing woman, preferably in some quiet room. Franky, thankfully, has taken pity on him and managed to distract her long enough so he could outrun Chopper and slip away from his hooffy grasp into the aquarium room, he is not waiting anyone there, a normal day would have find the crew on deck, taking advantage of the sunny weather after the storm of the day before. But it’s clearly not a normal day since there in one of the sofas is Usopp looking pitiful, his hand on Nami’s shaking shoulder and that’s an odd sight, that’s a wrong sight.</p><p>“What’s happening? Are you…” he rushes to ask because something is very wrong when Nami is sad. She straightens up at the sound of voice, turning around quickly and her hands are shaking and her eyes are swollen like she has been holding back tears for too much time.</p><p>“What?! No. Nothing’s happened, I’m fine, we are fine, Usopp and I are fine, you-”</p><p>“Nami…”</p><p>“She is worried about you” Usopp tells him.</p><p>“Usopp!”</p><p>“I am too, worried. Zoro”</p><p>“I’ll be fine” he lies, he doesn’t really know he doesn’t think it’s too late yes, but Chopper and Robin have been telling him some complicated things that sound kind of scary.</p><p>“You cannot die! I love you!” Nami cries out suddenly, interrupting whatever bullshit he was going to say. Usopp and him turn their head so fast towards her he is pretty sure he can feel the pulled tendon in Usopp’s neck.</p><p>“Ok… that’s-It’s an honour but…” he says carefully because it sounds true but can’t be right and maybe it’s a trap from her and she is too smart for him to even entertain the thought of understanding her – he is never saying that out loud -.</p><p>“Not like that you stupid motherfucker! I love you like I love Nojiko. We started this fucking trip together; we are the first two nakama, you cannot die now. I have to- I have to make a map so great that is Roronoa Zoro proof. I have to- to make a map with the place the Demon of the East Blue became the Greatest Swordsman, you cannot die, I know I’m being selfish but forget her! She is not making you happy, forget her, save your stupid life. I don’t give a shit about that- that bitch that can’t see how great you are…”</p><p>“Don’t- don’t… you know them. You like them, Nami” if she only knew. No, that’s a terrifying thought.</p><p>“Well I don’t like them anymore if they left you in this sorry state, that’s just plainly irresponsible.” She pouts.</p><p>“It is selfish, I know…” Usopp interrupts them, he also looks affected, Zoro knew he shouldn’t have left the crew know “and I-I don’t know what I’d do if any of you asked me to forget about Kaya, but… Have you seen someone you love die of sickness, Zoro? I have. I was there when mum passed.” Zoro shakes his head, he does knows what is to lost someone dear, he still remembers Kuina, but it was a quick thing and he has had time to process her death, he can honour her and channel her ambition, make of her death something meaningful, but he wasn’t there when she fell, he never saw her, or anybody, agonize “they kept pushing me away, the towns people, because she was so ill, but it was my home, there was nowhere else for me to go so I stayed there, when she couldn’t breathe at night.” he says wiping big tears from his eyes “You still have a chance to get over this, right? To get better”.</p><p>“Will you have the surgery, please? Please? They don’t need you as much as we do, and you promised Luffy, and you promised us, when we crossed the Grand Line, you promised that we’d fulfil our dreams together. Wh-what kind of- where would you leave your honour if you don’t fulfil your promises” that’s a low blow, even for her and she knows it, he can see it in her face, the calculating stare, the tense lines of her shoulders, she is ready to play dirty just to keep him alive and as touching as it is also very scary. Zoro wonders how long would it take for her to bring up debts if he plays dumb.</p><p>He gives a long-suffering sigh, he doesn’t have the energy to rile her up, he is tired all the time, breathless. Agonizing, his brain provides, and he doesn’t have the heart to just leave Usopp mourning like this.</p><p>“I’m getting the surgery; I was just talking with Chopper about it.”</p><p>“You are?! Well, that was easy” she tells Usopp and then rewinding the conversation in her head says “Oh, my God, I said so many embarrassing things just now.”</p><p>“Come here you stupid witch” Zoro says chuckling and dragging her into a hug, Nami hits him on a shoulder but there is no feeling behind it “I’m not abandoning you. What are you doing there? Come here” he adds opening his other arm so Usopp can fit into the hug, Usopp joins eagerly, still sniffling a little and Zoro thinks that what she said it’s not true, Sanji is part of the crew, a nakama, he also needs him. Just not in the way Zoro wants from him.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>“Heh…” Sanji laughs, leaning against the rail after lighting one of his cigarettes. It’s not a heartfelt laugh, it’s not even sarcastic. There is a sad way in the cook’s posture and Zoro can feel his throat start to burn. He tries to breathe and pretends to go back to his meditation time sitting against the rail. “Of any of us…” the cook adds, ignoring him ignoring him “I thought I’d be the one to die of love. Somehow, though, I always felt that you’ll be the one to die first, but that you’ll be going down swinging”</p><p>“I am swinging.” He says as zen as he possibly can “And I’m not going down. I’m getting the surgery.”</p><p>“Wow. That’s cold. I don’t think I would if I were you. But of course, if I were you, I would have already confessed. Funny that’s the thing you are a coward for, no?” Chopper had gotten a hold of him after his chat with Usopp and Nami and had run more exams on him until late at night – which was more of a problem for the doctor than for him and his messed up sleeping schedule – and had banned him from any kind of training, that includes brawling the cook, which meant that he hadn’t trained that morning and is itching for some sort of physical activity and having the cook close and rambling is of no help so he grounds his teeth and pretends to meditate. “Won’t accept your feelings, keep going forward stone-faced…”</p><p>“I’m not a coward, ok!” Zoro snaps “And accepting my feelings doesn’t means I have to tell the world about them. I’m being real here. They don’t love me and there is no way they will. I see no point in sacrificing my already unstable relationship with them by putting the weight of unrequired feelings on their shoulders”</p><p>“Do I know her? Maybe I can help you out, be your wingman…” he says softly, like he regrets opening his mouth and Zoro has to swallow a growl and kill the impulse of rolling his eye.</p><p>“<em>They</em> will be happier not knowing,” he says once he is sure he won’t bark something he’ll regret “even if it means that I won’t remember”</p><p>“That’s some selfish bullshit. You can’t know what they feel! How would you feel is a friend of yours suddenly forgets all about you? You, of all people that have so few friends.”</p><p>“Better than knowing the bastard’s death ‘cuz he’s too stubborn to go under surgery” Sanji huffs angry at that, putting out his cigarette and stomping away from him. Zoro can see he doesn’t understand, maybe is better that way.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He wants to live. He needs to live.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He is sure he will die and he may die for his captain but he will spear his last though for him. For the desperate way he had tried to save him, brash and antagonic and reckless, to take his place. To the way he had dragged him back into the little camp the crew had set among the rubble, to the way his thin hands had gripped him upright and his voice had called him into consciousness.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When Sanji finds Chopper and they lay him on the make-do stretcher Zoro can only focus on the muffled sound of Sanji’s voice before he gives up to the pain.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>“You won’t tell him” Luffy says sitting beside him in the boy’s quarters that night, they both know it’s not a question.</p><p>“No”</p><p>“Alright. Why?”</p><p>“He’ll do something stupid like blaming himself. He can’t help me and wants to save everybody and it will fuck him over bad.”</p><p>“Mmmh, you’re right. But if you had done what you were supposed to, things would be different, y’know.” What he was supposed to do, huh? Zoro thinks grinding his teeth what was he supposed to do? He doesn’t lie, it doesn’t mean he has to tell the truth about everything and he is not letting anyone know when it hurts. “And we wouldn’t be mad, the crew, right? We would have been fine with it, if it had turned either way. We are all nakama, we would’ve supported you, especially when Sanji had liked you back.”</p><p>“But he doesn’t”</p><p>“You’ll never know if you don’t tell him”</p><p>“Too late now”</p><p>“Fine” Luffy pouts and then stays quiet for a moment fidgeting but not going away. It’s somewhat comforting, knowing his captain understand, even if he doesn’t approve. Zoro thinks of dozing off when Luffy perks up again and asks him “Hey, how do you know your observation haki is working when you only have one eye now??”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As always kudos and comments are always welcome, thanks for reading~~</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Flowers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi here i bring you the second to last chapter!!<br/>some of things id like to clarify first:</p><p>i dont have my headcanon for Zeff sexuality set, but for the sake of making Sanji think a bit he is gay in this narration.</p><p>Sanji is... not on his brightest moment in this fic, call it denial, call it dumbassery he just doesnt know bisexuality is a thing until that one conversation with Zoro, i by no means think he is dumb, just a dumbass, and i wanted to lighten a bit the conversation they are having.</p><p>and Zoro, i have always though of him being bisexual but extremely demiromantic and no matter what canon or the most popular fandom hc says this is staying like this for me .</p><p>without further ado please enjoy this chapter!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“It’s because you keep getting fucking lost on your own, and I don’t even know how you fucking do it but you are always back for dinner. Even more punctual than Luffy, like a shitty street cat”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“When have you ever seen a street cat?” because the love-cook has literally lived his entire life at sea as far as Zoro knows, the only animals he knows are those meant to be food.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I saw a lot of things this past two years” the cook answers. Sanji had just arrived to Sabaody and as far as Zoro knew the first thing he did was start a pantry shopping trip. They had tripped into each other and after some teasing from his part – he was a fucking child, he couldn’t help himself, he was happy to be reunited with the crew and happy to see the cook again and Zoro doesn’t know if it’s a good or bad thing for him that the cook has gotten more attractive, his shoulders having broadened in a way that makes him weirdly proud and warm, filling his suit now like a proper man, not like a young thing trying to look older anymore, his face had changed too, sharper and with better facial hair, with the exception of his eyebrow, that Zoro had mocked the moment he saw it – Sanji had yelled at him for trying to go on his own and insisted on him tagging along so he would not get lost again and slash another boat in half.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You should get a cat for your pantry, keep the mice away” he says waiting for some outraged answer about his clean and spotless pantry but the love-cook doesn’t answer him for a while. When he does, his voice is soft and calm, no competitiveness or annoyance in it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“…I had a mouse pet once, you know”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“In a restaurant?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“N-yeah! It wasn’t- It didn’t end well but I used to cook for it and feed it, absolute rubbish food, though, I couldn’t cook for shit back then”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Did Zeff…?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“No, it wasn’t Zeff” Zoro doesn’t really understand why Sanji is telling him this, but it feels important, something the cook would only reveal to those close to him and Zoro’s chest feels liquid and warm, like the first time Sanji had given him spiced hot rum. It made him want to take the cook’s hand on his own and kiss the back of it to prompt him into continuing but he doesn’t. he keeps faking casual attentiveness, in a way it feels like it is what the love-cook wants of him, in reality Zoro knows he’d listen the cook read one of Robin’s books, as long as he uses this voice, soft and trusting, as long as it feels like Sanji is letting him know him. But that’s just him and his head so Zoro stays quiet and hides his hands inside his open yukata so they don’t betray him. “He was… he was rough but never cruel. He used to yell at me for the stupidest things but whenever he kicked me, it was just ‘cuz I was being a brat” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sanji smiles then, his mind somewhere else, Zoro wonders how changed would he be if he had known his parents, he also thinks that Sanji will be a good dad, whenever he settles with a girl. It makes Zoro’s insides twist uncomfortably, the image is wrong in his head, he knows that’s how it’s going to go after all, so he ignores the little kids with Nami’s and Chopper’s and Usopp’s face that know how to use knifes and swords but in his mind are trying to see who can kick the highest.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Have I told you that the first time he kicked me I was so shocked that it didn’t hurt? It was like being at the receiving end of one of Nami-san’s punches, it leaves a mark but it doesn’t really hurt and the old bastard can still kill people with his pinkie toe.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>“Stop following me like I may drop dead any second” he tells the cook, because Sanji has been tailing him all morning, far away enough that it doesn’t grant a fight. Zoro knows, he is been testing this, since breakfast (green tea, miso soup and baked fish, all his favourites and he has to frown at his food to stop himself from gazing lovingly at the caring idiot), the cook keeps showing up wherever he is, going the same places he does, smoking his cigarettes and lounging against walls and never looking at him. “I ain’t dying, ok? Hell knows I’m not scared of it but I still have things to do. People to protect. I’m not going anywhere, fucking chill.”</p><p>“I still can’t believe you are in love with anyone” Sanji waves him off with a scoff, dropping all pretence, wanting but not managing to make fun of him, trying to bring back the domesticity of their arguments but it comes out more as a sad imitation of a jab, and Zoro can feel the downcast angle of his smirk, the slumped way he is leaning on the stern rail. “I never thought you’d have it in you. Yeah, ok, I thought you’d probably, at some point leave a kid somewhere you’d never knew or care about, but you actually falling for someone, I thought… you’d not, I don’t…”</p><p>“The fuck are you saying? I have feelings, curly, I just don’t flaunt them all over like I’m in desperate need of attention. And I would never leave a kid behind, what kind of man does that? I have too many friends without parent to know it fucks you up.”</p><p>“Are you calling me a fuck up, marimo?”</p><p>“I was thinking about Nami and Usopp but if the boot fits… and who says we are friends anyway?” he teases out of reflect, the hope of diverting the cook of the topic of who he is dying for leaning over the corners of his consciousness. It works, Sanji’s face now contorting between answering back with another jackassery or being offended by the statement. It pulls the first smile in days from Zoro.</p><p>“Y-you cunt!?” it’s all Sanji can say and Zoro actually laughs out loud “You lying asshole! Here am I worrying about you and he kids you are leaving behind and your wife and all your little students from your dojo!”</p><p>“Since when I have a dojo” Zoro laughs and then, because Sanji is not actually angry and is red all over talking about their future the roots and vines inside his chest move and he coughs. It’s painful, it always is, and he is lucky the sea is right there and that there is only the two of them because he bends over the rail and coughs the flowers and the blood into the ocean, like an offering, like a sacrifice – isn’t that what he has always been? A sacrifice for the dreams of those he cares about? A sacrifice for best, for kingship, for ocean, for freedom – He shakes out of it when he feels the cook frantically patting his back, swearing under his breath.</p><p>“Fuck, shit, fuck, sorry. I didn’t mean to make you remember her” he sounds genuinely contrite and it only makes Zoro’s cough worsen.</p><p>“Not a her” he mumbles without noticing between coughs. His throat feels raw and swollen, and there is something tickling him there and he wants to shove his fingers inside his mouth and pull and pull until it’s all out, he doesn’t care if it’s rooted on his lungs and it takes half of them out, he has done worse to himself and if it means he will be able to breathe again he is ready to slash himself his ribcage open to pull the flowers out. He stops himself out of respect for Chopper.</p><p>“It’s a guy…” Sanji says when Zoro is finally able to breath, he is shocked but his hand is still on Zoro’s back, his gaze still on Zoro. What has he done? Zoro thinks, what has he let him know? “You are in love with a man. That’s why you could never tell them!” he adds when Zoro fails to answer him - avoids to answer - by cleaning the blood from his lips with his forearm. “Never took you for being gay…”</p><p>“That’s ‘cuz I’m not” he spits, angry at himself, and then spits for real because there is still blood and flowers on his mouth.</p><p>“You’re dying ‘cuz you’re in love with a man, marimo, you are gay”</p><p>“It’s not your fucking business but if I get off with men just as fine as with women then I’m not gay, cook, I just don’t care what they have between their legs” it shuts the cook for a while and Zoro can <em>hear</em> him thinking.</p><p>“That’s… that’s a thing?” Zoro looks at him unimpressed “Hey, it’s a sincere question! I didn’t know, I always though… I thought it was either or… don’t look at me like that I was raised by a bunch of rowdy ex-pirates, slash, half-backed cooks! I always thought you’d have to choose”</p><p>“It’s not a thing you choose! It just is!”</p><p>“Well I didn’t fucking know! Zeff never taught me shit about it except to be nice to women… if you choose to like women…”</p><p>“Zeff’s gay though”</p><p>“Don’t shit me, marimo, no he is not”</p><p>“Did you ever saw a woman coming out of his room? In all the years you lived there? Did he had any other children besides you? Or women claiming to have his children? He is gay”</p><p>“The shit, mosshead? No, he is… wait. No. Wait, fuck, ah motherfucker, I’ll have to send him a letter…” Sanji stays quiet for a couple of minutes, the sea breeze ruffling his hair and caring his smoky breath to Zoro. When they are like this, when there is no need to argue and Sanji is smoking calmly beside him, when the sea sways them gently and the air smells like tobacco smoke and sea salt and he can hear the crew faintly in the distance Zoro thinks in that which cannot be. These are the moments that hurt Zoro the most, these are the moments Zoro would have given his arms away for, Zoro thinks, looking at the endless blue of the sky and the sea, always together, never touching. “Where did you learn about it? When…?” Sanji asks him, earnest and curious.</p><p>“It’s just a thing that happens” he answers with the same calmness he can see in the cook. He then gestures towards his crotch with a vague wave of the hand “When that thing starts to think on its own, just acting up when I see someone that could kick my ass and is decent looking”</p><p>Silence falls between them again, it would be so easy to turn around and hold the cook by his hand, to tangle his fingers in his hair, brush it away from his face, to pull him into a kiss and end this trial. If only Zoro were more stupid, if Zoro were braver.</p><p>“Is he from the crew?” Zoro grunts his response to the sea and hopes the non-answer is answer enough “Is it Luffy?”</p><p>“Fuck no!”</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>He is running from Brook this time, and he really should not be running away from his own nakama in his own ship but the fencer is composing him a song. Brook has been jumping from paying Bink’s sake to any and all tragic love song of his repertoire on and off for the last three days and it’s as depressing as it sounds. He has managed to make half the crew cry at least once (Franky, Nami, Usopp, Chopper and even the cook have found themselves wiping away tears from their faces, rest assured, Nami is not happy) because as good a swordsman he is he is better as a performer and he sings with feeling. It makes Zoro want to bury his head in a barrel of rum but if it’s his way of coping Zoro is not going to stop him from singing, he won’t be giving him details of his ‘darling one’ however.</p><p>He still can hear the soft notes of Brooks violin from where he is in the crow’s nest. He is not exercising as for Chopper instructions but the place calms him, it’s his and have always been his place, and the night sky is calming and if he wished to, he could meditate here.</p><p>Not much time passes when Franky sits next to him, he felt him come, his clunky steps and his smell of machine oil.</p><p>“You should write them a letter, bro.” Franky says out of nowhere, but is ok because he is handing him a bottle of rum. Zoro takes it and uncorks it, but doesn’t drink, Franky still has things to say “If you fell for ‘em they must’a been the shit. They were your friend, wasn’t it? Maybe you should tell them you won’t recognize them next time you meet. Maybe confess, maybe not. If you don’t remember them after, then there is nothing to be afraid of, right?”</p><p>Zoro takes a swing of the rum then and misses the time when he was fifteen and alcohol would burn down his throat.</p><p>“Why are you trying to help, Franky?” It’s not like he doesn’t appreciate the sentiment, or that he doesn’t understand why his nakama are worried, but it’s getting tiresome, they shouldn’t feel that way because of him, that’s why he kept it for himself. Their sad faces make him want to fight himself. He has gotten soft hearted, he doesn’t find that troublesome, though.</p><p>“Bro… love’s a bitch,” Franky answers, and Zoro has to smile with him, “and I am old enough to know that living with regrets it’s not worth it, love and others. You are not the kinda man that regrets shit, you are the kinda man that makes sure that everything that happens to him it’s cuz he chose it. Now,” he interrupts himself pulling another bottle, a glass and a cola form the cabinet in his torso “lets toast! And you can tell me about your sweetheart later if you wanna.” He says pouring himself a glass – Zoro is already drinking out of the bottle – “Just rum first; harder than sake, sweeter than love”</p><p>“You are so cringy” he says without real heat.</p><p>“And you are young” Franky answers right back, putting one of his small hands that come from his big hands on his hair and ruffling it like he is a kid, it shouldn’t feel as nice as it does.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>“Chopper!” Luffy says before taking a seat for lunch five days after Zoro’s fainting spell “I know you’ve been making plans; I won’t stay here with my arms crossed, I will help, what do we do?”</p><p>“Right,” Chopper says flustered on his seat by the trust placed on his shoulders by their captain “so, ehm, Robin and me have been talking and this is what we will do” he tells Zoro, he tells to the crew “Nami, Jimbe, I need you to find a nice quiet place where we can anchor. I don’t care if it’s in the middle of the ocean or next to an island, but in three days tops I’m going to take Zoro to surgery if the disease hasn’t spread further”</p><p>“Spread further?” Usopp butts in “He’s been breathless for months now, what else can happen to him besides dying?”</p><p>“There is one last stage before the flowers blooms out of the host airways.” Robin explains “It last five days it can cause suffocation, this stage consists of petals falling from the sick person’s mouth every time they talk. It looks like a faery tale, it’s an actual nightmare”</p><p>“If Zoro starts talking with petals in the next two days, I don’t care where we are, you keep the ship steady and still, and I am operating. Robin will help me in the infirmary since she can provide more hands than any of you and still not use that much space, she also knows about the disease and has been studding about it the past few days. I need Nami, Jimbe and Franky to keep the Sunny still, since you know the sea and the Sunny the best.”</p><p>“Usopp, Sanji and I will keep an eye on anything coming by, if there is a fight, we will keep it away from the ship or in the worst case, the infirmary” Luffy declares, not looking for approval but knowing he has it.</p><p>“What do I do?” asks Brook a bit lost.</p><p>“Zoro will need a place to rest while I clean the infirmary, he’ll be staying in there anyway but I will need to hygenize it after the operation. Can you take care of it?” Chopper asks him and Brook nods then Chopper turns towards Sanji “He will need a meal prep for before and after the surgery, something that will help with his recovery”</p><p>“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here” Zoro complains.</p><p>“Well, if you had told me when you wanted you probably won’t be here next week” the little doctor snaps at him. Zoro has never really seen Chopper so angry before and feels somewhat ashamed for worrying him so much “he’ll need a room, or a bed, for one night. Probably some restrains… can you do that Brook?”</p><p>“He can take our quarters, if he needs a bed.” Nami offers looking at Robin, who just nods in agreement.</p><p>“Thank you. Now,” Chopper now talks looking at Zoro “on that day, you are going to go through some exams first. It’ll be quick, like the ones I took when you first slipped and let us all know. I’m going to draw blood and Franky says he has been making this machine that can tell me how much it has spread so we can see what I’m dealing with. You are not allowed to drink for twenty-four hours before the surgery, all right?” Zoro makes a face and a noise because it’s not all right but he can’t really say so “No drinking! Do you understand me?”</p><p>“All right!”</p><p>“Good. Jimbe, I need one more thing from you. Can you please keep an eye on him during that twenty-four hours? He respects you and I don’t trust him.”</p><p>“Aye!”</p><p>“Why the fuck do I need a nanny now?”</p><p>“You are sick and an idiot and I know you are in pain. I can smell it, I can smell the blood, Zoro, and I won’t have you doing something stupid before the surgery. So yes, a nanny. And Jimbe is the only one with the focus and strength to keep you on track. Sorry Luffy”</p><p>“Nah, it’s alright”</p><p>“Chopper,” calls Nami, there is a map spread open on the table that wasn’t there before and she is staring at it “in four days we’ll be in a calm spot at sea, according to my calcs. If we go full speed ahead, we could make it there in less than 80 hours. But only if Jimbe is the one steering.”</p><p>“Damn. Right, Sanji! Can you Zoro-sit?”</p><p>“Yes, doctor!” the cook says serving the last plate of lunch, no one has touched their food, not even Luffy, but Sanji will keep cooking and won’t let anyone leave his galley without having eating at least a dish.</p><p>“Zoro will endure it, right Chopper?” Brook asks, the skeleton has been anxious and Zoro can’t really blame him, it must not be easy on him seen another nakama ill and close to death “He’ll be ok if we make it there? We won’t- we won’t lose him, right?”</p><p>“You haven’t been speaking petals, have you?” Chopper asks him instead of answering Brook.</p><p>“Only coughing and pucking ‘em”</p><p>“We have eighty hours. I’ll keep him alive”</p><p>Zoro looks at them, at his crew, worried and determined. Organized. It’s not often they look like this. Chopper looks like he hasn’t slept since he found out, Nami looks just as bad. He hasn’t seen Robin without at least one book of medicine under her arm in days and Usopp has been cleaning obsessibly every surface of the ship. Jimbe has taken to drink with him in silence during the nights and fishing for the cook during the days. Brook has been composing and singing his romantic misadventures but has had the sense to stay away from Zoro, he thinks he is just coping so he lets him.</p><p>Franky works, Usopp helps him sometime but he works and works and works, he has created for Chopper a machine that can supposedly shoot a laser that by bouncing on a metal plank can take a picture of people’s insides, they are meant to tests the laser machine that same afternoon – Zoro will allow this, then grab the little doctor and force him to take a nap with him – Franky has also built stabilizers for the Sunny and a pair of metal lungs that he showed to him, Chopper and Robin in case things don’t go as planned. They can be useful for Sanji too, Franky jokes.</p><p>Sanji… Sanji just hovers over him trying to talk and not saying anything. It would be cute, if it wasn’t killing him.</p><p> </p><p>___________________</p><p> </p><p>He manages to take a nap with Chopper and meditate for a bit with the fuzzy boy still sleeping soundly curled on top of him. It gives him time to think, to decide what to do. When Chopper finally wakes up Zoro gets up and makes his way below deck.</p><p>Zoro writes the letter. He actually writes two and he will hand them to Luffy, because it’s important, it’s official, so their Captain should be in charge of giving the news. Luffy should have been the first, with Chopper, to know he was sick, anyway.</p><p>He is writing in Nami’s cartography room because the room has a lock and the fear of him dying has everyone walking on eggshells around him and trying to make things as comfortable for him as possible, which just accomplishes the opposite and becomes annoying and awkward. On the other hand, it also means that he can take as much advantage of Nami as possible before she goes back to being loud and bossy with him.</p><p>The first letter he writes is for the crew, a quick and artless explanation and a petition; he doesn’t want to know, there will be things he will forget, they should just retell them to him circling the issue. They are intuitive enough to know who he forgets when he wakes up and he doesn’t want the pity or the knowing looks. He had struggled between wanting post-surgery Zoro to know about the adventures and the history together or to be kept in the dark. The former option would make him suspicious; it would plant a seed of resentment; he doesn’t want that and so had decided against it. He also asks the crew to please stop him from doing something stupid like falling in love with a straight man again.</p><p>The second letter is for Sanji. He has decided it’s fair, after all, they have been through hell together, and the love-cook, stupid as he is, probably will miss him. It reads:</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>I love you. And I have been a coward. You are worth every second I’ll miss and I am selfish, I rather see you again tomorrow, even if I don’t know who you are. I’m certain I’ll fall for you again so please don’t be gentle, turn me down fast and certain. I rather be here to see you mourn, like I know you will, the memories I no longer have than knowing I hurt you worse by not fighting this and giving up on mine and the crew’s dreams. Your food has always been the best, don’t believe me when I eventually say it sucks, I say it just to rile you on. Don’t be nice to me Sanji, I don’t deserve your kindness. I would have lived my entire life with his plants in my chest if it had meant I could see your stupid smile every morning but I’m dying and I told you I’ll live so that’s what I will do. Know that I’ll have a hole with your shape that I’ll never be able to fill, because I love you more than I want to be the best, but I made a promise that I have to fulfil, I have a debt, you get that. But I’ll make a promise to you too, next time, I will speak up.</p>
</blockquote><p>He is tempted to crush it, burn it or chuck it at the sea. It’s embarrassing, it’s wordy and still not want he means to say. In the end he just turns the page and with the green ink that Nami uses to draught forests he writes:</p><p>Like yellow petals</p><p>When you smile warm and broad</p><p>I bleed here my love</p><p>He folds them carefully, purposefully, infusing them with a little of his haki, enjoying the sadistic fact that now the paper of his letters can cut someone with its edges before he slips them on a pair of envelopes he had found in a drawer, in the envelope of the one for the cook he puts a dried flower, the one he took to town so many days ago. He kept it, he is not sure why, and he doesn’t know if what he is doing is romantic or cruel but it feels like something he has to do. He seals the letters and leaves the room.</p><p>Luffy is in the galley when he finds him and he would have liked to make the handing of the letters something more private but as soon as Luffy sees the envelopes he points the out loudly and because it’s the galley the love-cook is there. Luffy may have done it on purpose and Zoro will never know, given the absolute chaos of his captain head but now Sanji has his attention on them.</p><p>“What’s this?” the love-cook asks, trying to take the envelops, Zoro snatches them away from his hand and then remembers that the fucks can cut and the more reason the cook shouldn’t hold them.</p><p>“Instructions” he gets to says before Luffy interrupts him.</p><p>“Franky told Zoro to write a letter to the person he loves. I don’t know why there is two”</p><p>“One is for the crew!”</p><p>“A love-letter?” Sanji teases him “Aren’t you full of surprises, mosshead-kun, never knew you were the kind that writes”</p><p>“I never though Zoro knew how to write”</p><p>“I’ve never sent a love letter” Sanji says ignoring them now “Never received a love letter either…”</p><p>Zoro can picture him opening the letter, his agile fingers unfolding the paper and his traitorous mind shows him a Sanji that runs his fingers through the words, a Sanji who smiles reading it, who takes the dry flower to his lips and graceful and effortless folds the letter again and places it in his pocket, the one that is on top of his heart, to keep it with him always like the lovesick thing he is and still laughs at him for his fruitless efforts at romance but kisses him on the cheek and continues with his day. It’s yours Zoro wants to say, treasure it.</p><p>“I know how to write, dammit” he says instead, because the things inside his chest are moving and growing making him feel tight and breathless. When he looks up for more mockery his nakama are watching him frozen.</p><p>“Shit. <em>Shit!</em>” Sanji says, looking at his table and the yellow petals on it, the petals that had just fallen down from Zoro’s mouth. Then he runs to the door and screams “Chopper!”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>has anyone spotted the WCI hints yet?</p><p>also, i just posted a tiny thing on tuesday called   <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26229466"> Night Gamble </a></p><p>if you wanna check it</p><p>as always comments and kudos make me happy, thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Fruit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>first of all thank you so much for all the comments and kudos! i never though this fic would get this much engagement</p>
<p>i cant believe that i started writing this on 2018 and its finally finished, i know i posted iregularly but the writing of this has been a complete mess and for once im proud of finishing it</p>
<p>now welcome to the final chapter of Daylilies i really hope you enjoy it</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You know that thing that cats do when they are going to die and hide from their owners?” Sanji tells Zoro when he finds him in Usopp’s factory, sulking “You are doing it. Stop it.” He says leaning against a wall next to where he is sitting. Zoro wants to tell him to go away, that he won’t do anything stupid, he has no booze and has no intention of drinking, he won’t throw himself into any reckless distraction, but the petals will be there when he opens his mouth, and they may be gentler than the cough but they crowd on his throat and nose if he is not careful. He wishes they would stop; he wishes Sanji to be gone, it’s too painful to have them both there. “Been thinking, about what we talked yesterday… so yeah, Zeff’s gay, fuck it, I’m stupid. But,” Sanji breaks the silence again, Zoro has been trying to maintain it since Chopper moved the date of the operation to the next morning, because- because the crew being quiet is better than the tiptoening they are making around him, softly talking to him, eyes big and wet, like they are mourning him already. But Sanji… Zoro sees out of the corner of his eye the way he rips little pieces of his cigarette package before choosing a stick and rolling it around his fingers because he needs to do something with his hands “there is decent looking people in this ship… the girls are gorgeous,”</p>
<p>“Have you come to talk about the girls?!” Zoro snarls and the pretty little pests falls from his mouth.</p>
<p>“and they can pull up a fight just fine” he keeps going without paying him attention. He finally places the cigarette on his mouth and chews on it with more energy than needed, he doesn’t light it, playing around with his gold lighter “but you said it’s not a girl. And Usopp, he’s grown fine? Right? He’s gotten strong too, and smart and funny…”</p>
<p>“What are you on about?” Zoro asks standing up, making his way outside, thinking of his breathing, if he keeps it steady, he can control where the flowers are going and he needs them all out.</p>
<p>“Shut up! Just shut up! I’m trying to make a point here goddammit! So, it’s not the girls ‘cuz you said it was a man, but it’s not Luffy ‘cuz you said so and Brook is dead and Franky is- is Franky and Chopper is literally an animal so that leaves Usopp, Jimbe and- and-”</p>
<p>Zoro sighs defeated, at least this will soften the blow of him not remembering Sanji the next morning.</p>
<p>He tries to leave like the self-preserving coward he has become but the cook grabs him by the sleeve. Suddenly, Sanji has him seized by the collar of his yukata against a wall, Zoro can see his too white knuckles and his too close face, his cigarette forgotten but he still smells like tobacco and his breath is rushed, like he is angry. Like he is about to cry.</p>
<p>“The hell are you do-”</p>
<p>“WHY? Why you didn’t fucking tell me?! If it was me, if it has always been me- I could have done something!! I could have been more of an asshole, I could have acted different, I could’ve- I could’ve…”</p>
<p>“You could have what?! You were not gonna fall for me! I am not asking you to do that! I ain’t told you ‘cuz I don’t want your pity; I don’t want your attention ‘cuz I’m dying and you feel the sick need to feel guilty about it! It is not your faut! I fucked up and fell for you an-” he can’t finish. Sanji is shoving his tongue inside his mouth, kissing him, trying to. Too desperate, too hard, all teeth and grieve.</p>
<p>The cook has him pinned against the wall now but his pale hands seem to, instead of push him in place, hold to him for dear life and Zoro can’t help but let go.</p>
<p>Because he wants.</p>
<p>He wants this so much, enough to lose sight of reality for just one moment, for just one kiss. And the cook’s lips are thin and cold but softer than his own and the rushed edge of his desperation softens when he feel Zoro’s answering mouth and it lasts a second and a lifetime and it comes crushing down when the sound of ruckus comes from somewhere near and Zoro has to push the cook away because he feels the flowers coming, the burn in this throat and the soft plant matter.</p>
<p>He throws up. Doubling down and half kneeling on the floor, not able to gasp for air, feeling the tears swell in his eyes, watching the sploshes of red in the pretty yellow flowers falling down his mouth and nose.</p>
<p>He looks up and can see Sanji standing right besides him, motionless, covering his mouth with his hands and he may be crying but it also might be his own tears blocking his vision. Then Sanji runs out the door.</p>
<p>It’s not even a moment after when the cook is back with a bucket and cleaning supplies. He passes him the bucket and a wet cloth and Zoro just dumps himself to the floor against the wall, watching Sanji clean the biggest bucket he has thrown up so far. He feels weak and his vision is back at the edges and his clothes are clinging to his back with cold sweat but he still manages to say:</p>
<p>“It’s like I’m in a fucking faery tale, cook. It won’t work if you don’t mean it and I’ve never been a goddammed heroine. I don’t get the prince”</p>
<p>Sanji slides down the wall next to him after wiping the floor of any blood and any flower, hands buried in his golden hair and Zoro hates himself because Sanji is beautiful and worried about him and he loves him so much.</p>
<p>“You are gonna forget me.” he says broken and Zoro doesn’t understand why “You are gonna forget me and you don’t even care. You are dying because you love me but you still choose to forget me”</p>
<p>“Why do you care so much?” it comes out soft, because his throat is raw and his ribs are crushed and it hurts. It hurts because it would be easier if the cook didn’t care, it hurts because he would like to break something right now but he doesn’t even have the strength for lift himself from the floor.</p>
<p>“Because you are my friend!” he says, something fierce and vulnerable in his eyes. Zoro can control his impulses but he can’t control his wants and he wants to lean and chase the taste of smoke and nicotine in the mouth of the cook “I’ve never had friends my age until you came crushing down the Baratie and I fucking like you, you remind me of the shitty old man, you push me to be better, to get my shit together. You were the first thing that made the Merry feel like home because you would not stop arguing with me and it was like I was on the kitchens again, shit Zoro can you fucking believe you are my best friend”</p>
<p>“Don’t say that…”</p>
<p>“and I know you. And you won’t care about me after the surgery, not at least until the next big fight, because I’ll have to prove myself to you all over again and you’ll hate me because I also know myself and I don’t know how to fucking behave.</p>
<p>If you forget me and I try to be friendly you’ll just scoff at me and if I try to make things normal again, you’ll think I’m a fucking weirdo that just wants to fight you. And if those things happen you’ll have questions anyway, you are not stupid, you are dumb as shit but not stupid and what I’m supposed to tell you ‘you don’t remember me ‘cuz you got sick after falling in love with me and I’m so not worth it you decided it was better not to remember me than confess? Also, you were dying’ do you think you’d believe me? Oh motherfucker, no you are right, go gotta get the surgery. I’m gonna fucking miss you, but don’t you dare dying.”</p>
<p>“And you are telling me this because I won’t remember…?” he asks him as softly as he can, Sanji looks like a scared animal and maybe Zoro doesn’t want to be alone anymore. Sanji shrugs defeated beside him, so close Zoro can feel the heat of him, hear the rustling of fabric moving again each other.</p>
<p> “I could have done something, I could have… I fall hard and fast, you know that; I don’t have to choose anymore, I could’ve”</p>
<p>“You would never had fallen for me, love-cook, and I’d never ask you to” he says, his walls finally kicked down, he feels gutted, like those fishes the cook serves sometimes, only there is flowers instead of herbs inside him, and there is nothing to hide now, no one to protect anymore, all damage already done “I don’t regret you, fruitless as it is, you were worth every second and I’m stupid enough that I’ll fall for you again if I’m not careful, if it’s any consolation… and you are too good for me anyway, I could never make you happy. You deserve happy. To have a girl that makes you smile just because, not ‘cuz you feel you have to.”</p>
<p>“The only good thing is that I’ll fucking wipe the floor with you when we fight from now on” Sanji says trying to lighten up the mood, trying to divert the subject. “You wont fucking know what kicked you”</p>
<p>“Heh, yeah, and I won’t remember how much fucking hurt when you left the crew to marry a woman you didn’t even know” <em>Shit</em>. Sanji’s face crumbles ashamed. Shit. But Zoro can’t stop the words that rise like bile up his throat, like petals falling form his mouth “you left us… you fucking left us all and you fucking left <em>me.”</em> The bitter laugh from earlier gone and Zoro is just bitter and hurt now “you were my left guard, the eyes on my back and you left me to take care of the crew all alone. We were both supposed to protect the rest and you left and half the crew went away after you, you broke the crew again, and it hurt so much I couldn’t even go to bring you back myself because if you didn’t want to come back I would have killed you. Because if Nami couldn’t bring you back it meant- it meant that you didn’t care and if you didn’t care, if you had managed to fuck us over like that and I had been there I would have buried my heart with you on that island.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry”</p>
<p>“Fuck no. You are here, you are back, I understand now. Fuck the Germa and fuck Big Mom. It wasn’t just us in danger, I know, and you were always too good for them and you came back. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still hurt.”</p>
<p>Sanji buries his hands further on his hair and pulls and Zoro wants to tell him to stop, but he is shaking now, looking young and helpless and Zoro has the sudden image of Sanji, sitting in a corner of a big room that is his but doesn’t belong to him after his mom mortuary rituals, of Sanji cold and skinny on a rock surrounded by sea but unable to sail it. Stuck and anchored and impotent.</p>
<p>“Why are you so sad?” he asks because he can’t wrap his head around it. He will be fine; they will be fine again someday.</p>
<p>“Because you are leaving me behind!”</p>
<p>“How come I’m leaving you behind?! <em>Why</em> are you so sad?”</p>
<p>“’cause! Because…” and Sanji is looking at him for a beat and then he lunges at him, kissing him again, his hands in his short hair, pressing his earring against his flesh, mouth hot and demanding and he is climbing over him, straddling him and Zoro is too dazed to push him away, to weak to push him off of him. Instead his hands end in the cook’s hips, feeling the heat of his skin through the shirt. Oh, he is weak, he can’t push him away, it feels good and right, like the first breath after diving to rescue one of the devil fruit users and having his friend safe again, like the sound Wadö makes while coming out of the sheath after being cleaned. When Sanji pushes his tongue inside his mouth again and angles his head to kiss him better he moans. He can feel the smoke of the cook’s breath, the clear water of his spit and Zoro must taste like blood, like plants and blood so he pushes away, turns his head to the side, trying to breathe through the lump of plant matter buried in his throat, through the roots and leaves heavy on his chest.</p>
<p>“You have to stop that! It won’t make me better” it hurts to know that’s truth and it hurts more when he looks at Sanji and this time there are tears clinging stubbornly to his eyes, red rimmed and swollen. Sanji is fighting not to break down and cry in from of him and Zoro can’t fathom why. Why is Sanji feeling so much? Why he kissed him? Why he insists on a different solution? Sanji pants once and is off of him, covering his face, looking away, making his way to the door.</p>
<p>“Y’know, they forgot me because they never loved me. You will forget me because you do. Somehow it hurts worse” Sanji says fishing his cigarette from the floor where it lay forgotten and finally lighting it up “You better not fucking die, marimo” he says just before going through the door, the smoke the only thing of him left in the room.</p>
<p>Zoro waits until he can’t hear the cook footsteps to grab the bucket again and empty his lungs onto it. It burns like saltwater; it burns worse than saltwater and if his eyes water and tears run down from his eyes it’s the heaving’s fault.</p>
<p>Zoro stays there on the floor after catching his breath surrounded by the petals that kept falling from his mouth with every secret revealed until Chopper finds him and softly demands of him to go to sleep, tomorrow he’ll get surgery and he needs to rest as much as he can.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>___________________</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>There is a den-den mushi message form Nami asking for more time, one or two more days, they had found him and there had been a fight, an ugly one, Nami tells them in the privacy of the room Law has borrowed to Robin, she is bunking with Franky and Zoro shares a room with Usopp and two more men but it’s not like he is getting any sleep, even if he pretends to nap most of the time.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Luffy isn’t eating, Nami tells them and there is an edge to her voice that Zoro can’t stand, he should be there, she shouldn’t be talking like that, for as much as they fight Nami feeling hopeless is not something Zoro can stay idle by, he should be doing something. She tells them about this other pirate crew they are not sure what is playing at but he can’t hear anymore.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>He wants to get out, pace around, lift his weights but he doesn’t have them, and this ship is not his and he can’t climb to the crow’s nest. He’s been living at sea for years now and he had never felt this suffocated, the lighting is off and the smells are off and the food is wrong, he feels like an animal trapped inside a cage and he knows he will do something stupid like slash open the fish-can they are traveling in if he doesn’t calm down but meditation only works so much.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And it’s this fucking message, because if Luffy can’t bring the cook back, if Nami can’t bring him back… it means, it fucking means… he has to forget him; Sanji is gone for good, off to marry some random girl, off to become part of a new crew, one big enough, strong enough to find the All Blue without any issue, he goes back to his blood family and to be the prince he always has dreamed to be, forgetting them already and Zoro hates the feeling.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Zoro has never had any faith, faith is not a virtue he has managed to develop ever, there is only the things you do and the thing you don’t, the effort people put into something and the abilities of the people surrounding them and Zoro is self-aware enough to know that this whatever thing he does not want to name is only one sided but at least he though the comradery was there, the trust, the mutual teasing built in a foundation of mutual responsibility and respect, only now it seems to be one sided as well and this shit hurts because Sanji was supposed to be there until the end with them, there when Luffy claimed the title, there when Zoro finally win, and there, so Zoro could see his stupid face shine with joy after finding his faery tale ocean. Zoro has never done anything to expect reciprocity for his unnamed feeling, he has no faith, there is no hope in there, no expectations, but he has worked for that smile.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Zoro wishes to be the kind of man that prays, so his mind could be occupied with something, so he could ask for this one miracle. To forget, because he can’t forgive.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>___________________</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The first thing he does after waking up is breathe, deep and clear, he remembers Chopper angry frown staring at his face while he changes from brain point to horn point – the horns are a problem but he has long and steady fingers in this form – he remembers the anaesthesia being injected (five times) and Robin’s presence in the background develing the laser pictures results. He remembers falling asleep with Sanji’s crying face on his mind before everything dissolves to nothing.</p>
<p>“You’re awake!” he is still in the infirmary and Sanji is sitting next to the operation table looking ungroomed and bright and that’s not ok somehow? Shouldn’t he… shouldn’t he not be able to remember him?</p>
<p>“Sanji?” he asks, and the cook laughs but there are tears gathering in his eyes “What? How…?”</p>
<p>“Fuck yeah it’s me! I told you I could do something!” he says launching himself to sit on the operation table/stretcher.</p>
<p>“How the <em>fuck?</em>” he asks again, trying to sit up but Sanji pushes him gently with a hand to his chest and leaves it there, over his heart.</p>
<p>“Well shit, you are corresponded! I told you I fall hard and fast”</p>
<p>“That can’t be right”</p>
<p>“I kissed you twice last night, you should remember, asshole. And then you barfed flowers all over the place. You got lucky, marimo-kun~, that I realized I could allow myself want to see you naked” he says, big indecent smile splitting his face while his eyes roam Zoro’s naked chest “And that Chopper did not cut you open before realizing you had nothing on you anymore” he tells him more serious now “he stormed out of the infirmary after you were out cold, yelling bloody fucking murder, because apparently your laser pics were defective and if Franky could fix the machine right fucking now. He took them again and listened to your breathing and nothing was wrong, almost like you were never sick. So, he asked if any of us had any idea of what the hell happened and Luffy pulled the letters you wrote and read them out loud in the dining area. It was embarrassing to say the least. I cried. Nami-san currently has a headache over how angry she is because we are fucking morons. I also had to reveal that I knew already and that I had kissed you last night and why, I left out the also embarrassing part where I didn’t know that you can like men and women at the same time so now that we are out in the public and you are my boyfriend please abstain from mentioning it in frown of our nakama.”</p>
<p>Zoro frowns and tries to sit up, too much information to try to comprehend only after about five minutes of waking up. He tries to ground himself, talking in the room, everything that surrounds him except the person in front of him. The infirmary, right, white and clean smelling. He breathes in closing his eyes and counting backwards from ten, then ten out again, his lungs working properly for the first tie in months and he can breathe without the impending treat of a bloody coughing bouquet. He opens his eye and Sanji is there, dried yellow daylily on his chest pocket and every insult, every kick and every smile comes to him all at once, all the heartache and want and breath-taking love, helping him up this time, sliding closer, hand high on his arm, looking at him like he is seeing him for the first time. Sanji lifts his other hand to touch his face, the coarseness of his scar, the high of his cheek, the sharpness of his jaw and it stops in his neck, fingers curving in the short hairs of his nape.</p>
<p>“I’m going to kiss you now” Sanji breathes shyly “I will kick you back into a coma if you throw up on me this time”</p>
<p>Zoro leans in and kiss Sanji then, short and giving in into the impulse, then again, peck after peck until Sanji is laughing and holding his head to kiss him properly, soft mouth and wet tongue and scruffy chin and Zoro can have this now.</p>
<p>Sanji breaks apart with a happy gasp and Zoro can see him now, blush high on his ears and dumb smile on his face and Zoro is stunned by how much he loves him, how much he wants to make him happy.</p>
<p>“You are so fucked, mosshead,” he says breathless and smiling at him, so happy it makes Zoro feel stupid in the most delicious way “you are never getting rid of me, marimo”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>as always comments and kudos make me happy and thanks for reading and sticking with me until the end.</p>
<p>im thinking of writing a short, smutty continuation but idk when id be posting that cuz i have this 8 chapter fic almost finished that ill be uploading from the next week forward.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, kudos and comments are always welcome and thank you for reading~</p></blockquote></div></div>
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